Period Piece

A Haunting in Venice: The Ghost of the Town

Jeremy BeckReviews
Kenneth Branagh in A Haunting in Venice

Just what kind of genius is Hercule Poirot? Six years ago, in his remake of Murder on the Orient Express, Kenneth Branagh reimagined Agatha Christie’s famous detective as a man obsessed with balance; his gift for crime-solving derived from his preternatural ability to recognize when clues and alibis didn’t line up. In his two ensuing movies—first the forgettable Death on the Nile, now the somewhat-improved Haunting in Venice—Branagh seems to have abandoned this conceit, instead depicting his super-sleuth as a quasi-scientist who unravels mysteries through the rigorous application of “order and method.” He isn’t some sort of deductive wizard; he just pays attention.

This doesn’t make Poirot an especially interesting character, but it does function as a handy metaphor for Branagh’s own filmmaking. The traps inherent in the murder-mystery picture—the isolated location, the assemblage of suspects, the cheap twists and red herrings, the destination overshadowing the journey—are difficult to evade. This time out, Branagh doesn’t so much avoid them as skillfully blunt their impact. His version of “order and method” is to deploy familiar cinematic tools in order to bring energy and flair to a production whose narrative bones are dusty and creaky. A Haunting in Venice doesn’t exactly revive this moldy skeleton, but it does clothe it in alluring imagery and spooky atmosphere. Read More

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Oppenheimer: The Bomb Before the Storm

Jeremy BeckReviews
Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer

Christopher Nolan doesn’t always make movies about the end of the world, but the worlds of his movies always feel like they’re about to end. Regardless of their focus—a memory-impaired man searching for meaning, a group of con artists invading the realm of dreams, a squad of soldiers marooned on a beach—their combustible tension creates the sense that their characters’ lives are on the perpetual verge of implosion. So it’s both fitting and perverse that Oppenheimer, Nolan’s study of the (mad?) scientist who developed the atomic bomb, is his least outwardly visceral picture in decades. The stakes here couldn’t possibly be higher—at various points, people discuss the possibility of “atmospheric ignition,” a chain reaction that would engulf the planet (the odds of this, we’re assured, are “near zero”)—yet they unfold in the context of a talky, intimate chamber drama. The apocalypse will be ushered in not by motorcycle chases or time paradoxes, but by stern looks and harsh words.

If you think that sounds gentle or staid, did I mention that this was a Chris Nolan movie? Unbound from his usual need to dazzle us with eye-popping set pieces and brain-scraping premises, cinema’s most enduring populist (OK, second-most) has channeled his commercial savvy into depicting a concept that’s disarmingly straightforward: men at work. Oppenheimer is a film of grave power and sweeping intensity, made all the more propulsive by Jennifer Lame’s exacting editing and Ludwig Göransson’s majestic score, but its energy is grounded in recognizable anxieties and human emotions. It’s the product of a science-fiction filmmaker pivoting to science-fact. Read More

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From the Vault: Seabiscuit, 20 Years Later

Jeremy BeckReviews
Seabiscuit

[EDITOR’S NOTE: In 2003, long before MovieManifesto.com existed, I spent my summer as a 20-year-old college kid writing as many movie reviews as I could. My goal was to compile them all into a website, possibly hosted by Tripod or Geocities, which would surely impress all of the women in my dorm. That never happened—neither the compiling nor the impressing—but the reviews still exist. So, now that I am a wildly successful critic actually have a website, I’ll be publishing those reviews on the respective date of each movie’s 20th anniversary. Against my better judgment, these pieces remain unedited from their original form. I apologize for the quality of the writing; I am less remorseful about the character of my 20-year-old opinions.]

There is an epic majesty about Seabiscuit, and I don’t just mean the horse. This is a throwback motion picture, one that is redolent of a distant era of cinema in which filmmakers suffused their creations with spirit and passion. It is by no means a flawless film – it is too long, too sentimental, and too reverential – but it carries itself with an elegant grace and nobility, and it has unanticipated moments of considerable power. For all its faults, Seabiscuit is a complete film, both uncommonly thoughtful and undeniably exhilarating, all the way to the finish line. Read More

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BlackBerry: Game of Phones

Jeremy BeckReviews
Jay Baruchel and Glenn Howerton in BlackBerry

The very last thing you hear in BlackBerry—I promise I’m not spoiling anything—is the high-pitched whine of a dial-up modem connecting to the internet. To younger viewers, it’ll sound like an atonal clash of beeps and hisses, but for folks of a certain age, it’ll instantly transport you (OK, me) back to the mid-’90s: that nascent online era of Napster, Geocities, and Netscape Navigator. Directed by Matt Johnson from a script he wrote with Matthew Miller, BlackBerry isn’t purely a nostalgia piece, but an undeniable part of its appeal lies in its authentic evocation of a time when the worldwide web was a vast electronic frontier, full of hope and possibility. We had no clue what the internet might become, which meant it could become absolutely anything.

It turned into a lot of things, including (from an entrepreneurship perspective) a breeding ground for false promises, egomaniacal puffery, and unrealized dreams. Anyone could conceive of anything; the question was whether they could actually make and sell it. This inherent tension between imagination and execution—the challenge of transmuting far-flung ideas into actionable results—is familiar ground for storytelling, and BlackBerry’s tech-bubble saga of success and failure occupies well-trod territory. (The book it’s based on, by Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff, literally includes the phrase “extraordinary rise and spectacular fall” in its subtitle.) What makes the movie entertaining, aside from its irresistible contrast in personalities, is its bountiful specificity. It opens in 1996 Ontario and occasionally feels like it was actually shot then and there—less a modern docudrama than a magic portal into a time and place of wheezing hatchbacks, wanly lit offices, and first-person shooters. Read More

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Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret: Girlhood Is Hard, Period

Jeremy BeckReviews
Rachel McAdams and Abby Ryder Fortson in Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret

It is the nature of children to want things: a shiny new toy, an extra scoop of ice cream, a different body. Kids aren’t selfish because they’re rotten; they’re selfish because they’re kids. So as childish requests go, 11-year-old Margaret’s first prayer to the almighty—“Please don’t let New Jersey be too horrible”—is awfully modest. It’s also evidence that she’s a sweetheart, and Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret—Kelly Fremon Craig’s nimble adaptation of the beloved Judy Blume novel—honors her decency without really complicating it. It’s a nice movie about a nice girl with nice parents, which means that, depending on your perspective, it might feel like either a memoir or a fantasy.

As a boy who grew up in the ’90s—my own pleas to an unspecified deity tended to revolve around the Super Nintendo—I can’t pretend to fully relate to the challenges of a prepubescent girl in the ’70s, but I can still appreciate the skill and care with which Fremon Craig has translated Blume’s book to the screen. Yet because my own youthful immaturity never subsided as I ventured into adulthood, I can also grumble that, while the film smoothly sketches the genre’s most durable tropes—the awkward parties, the confusing crushes, the desperate attempts to fit in—it doesn’t always flesh out its characters. It’s an enjoyable time capsule of childhood helplessness that strangely lets its adult viewers off a little easy. Read More

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